Birdo's Past
by Martial Arts Master
Summary: My first attempt at a romance fic, so I apologize if it's too mushy. This also gives insight into the past of a very underappreciated character, in my opinion. Please review!


Birdo's Past  
by Martial Arts Master  
Mario and all related characters copyrighted by Nintendo. The reason I decided to do this fanfic was because Birdo is a way underappreciated character, and almost nothing is known about her past. I wrote this after having rented and played Mario Tennis. Now that I've settled that, on with the story.  
  
***  
  
Everything was well. The tennis tournament had long been gone, and Yoshi and Birdo managed to win the doubles section of the tournament after a long and difficult match with Bowser and Boo. Everyone congratulated the pair, except of course for the evil Wario, Waluigi, and Bowser. Those three had been sore losers. In fact, no one was certain that they weren't plotting some devious revenge. But this story begins elsewhere, in Yoshi's home...  
Yoshi was fixing up his place. He was doing a great job, despite the fact that all he could think about was Birdo. She played tennis remarkably well, being so fast. She was also EXTREMELY cute, in Yoshi's opinion. Yoshi snapped out of it and tried to get back to cleaning his place, but Birdo's face came back to his mind again and again.  
"Darnit!" he said to himself. "Why can't I stop thinking about her?"  
Then he found himself babbling to himself in answer.  
"She's cute, nice, fast, a good tennis player, smart..." he said, then repeatedly shook his head to clear his head of such thoughts. Now was not the time for flights of romantic fancy. Besides, even if he and Birdo became a couple, they couldn't even kiss. He had a mouth, and she had a snout. Still, he wondered what it would be like to kiss her...  
He promptly laid an egg and bashed himself in the head with it. He was losing his mind over her, and he thought he had better shape up fast or he'd eventually end up proposing to her.  
"Besides," he thought to himself. "She wouldn't be interested in someone like me anyway."  
He tried to go back to cleaning his home, but when the image of Birdo refused to go away, he threw up his hands in frustration and obeyed his instincts. He set out for Birdo's home in search of an answer to why he felt this way.  
It was a long journey, but eventually he came to a house decorated with red ribbons. This was obviously Birdo's place.  
He rang the doorbell and waited a few minutes. No one answered. He tried knocking on the door, but when his fist hit the door, the impact jarred a note loose from the crack in between the door and exterior wall. He picked up the note and read it.  
It said, "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! I am Bowser, and I REFUSE to accept that a green little punk---" here he bristled at the insult, but continued reading "and a lousy little girl---" here, for some reason, he felt even more angry at the insult to Birdo "cost me and Boo our chance of winning the tournament when we were SO close! If you're reading this, you little green punk, I captured Birdo and have her here right now at my fortress. Come to me now...if you DARE!!!"  
At the bottom it was signed, "Yours truly, Bowser."  
Yoshi was infuriated. He tore the note in half and threw it in a trash can. He couldn't believe Bowser would be such a sore loser as to kidnap one of the people who beat him. Yoshi ran towards Bowser's fortress, hoping Bowser hadn't hurt Birdo. If he had, Yoshi would forget his normally gentle nature and pound the stuffing out of Bowser...  
  
Actually, Bowser hadn't hurt Birdo. In fact, it was vice versa. Bowser had made the mistake of stepping into the cage that held Birdo so he could torture her, and she was delighted in pelting him with eggs shot out of her mouth (Author's Note: I know she can't do this in Mario Tennis, but she can do it in Super Mario Bros: 2).  
"Ow! Ow!" Bowser shouted. "Stop it! You're hurting me!"  
"What'sa matter?" Birdo taunted. "Can't take hits from a GIRL?!"  
"Of course I can take hits from a lousy little girl!" Bowser retorted and moved toward Birdo, who responded by driving him back with more eggs.  
Birdo giggled and said, "This is funny, but it's getting kinda boring. I wish someone would get here and get me outta here soon."  
Bowser stopped trying to move toward her, so she stopped pelting him with eggs. But she quickly found out why he had stopped moving toward her.  
"Yeah, I bet you'd like one person in PARTICULAR to come here and save your sorry butt," Bowser said, grinning.  
"What do you mean by that?!" Birdo asked, though she feared she knew what he meant.  
"I'm talking about the way you looked at that little green punk while he was spinning around with joy from winning the tournament," Bowser said. He then said mockingly, "You've fallen HEAD over HEELS in LOVE with him!"  
Birdo's face turned pinker, if that were even possible considering her face was already pink.  
"That's not funny!" Birdo shouted, embarassed. "I'm not interested in him that way at all!"  
"Oh SURE," Bowser taunted. "I bet he's actually the ONLY ONE for YOU!"  
"SHUT UP!" Birdo said, getting more embarassed.  
Suddenly an egg came flying at the cage, and the egg shattered the cage. Both Bowser and Birdo looked in the direction the egg had come from and were startled to find Yoshi staring back at them. Birdo jumped behind Yoshi and wiggled her fingers in her ears in a taunting gesture. But Bowser had one more ace up his sleeve.  
"Yo Birdo!" Bowser said. "Maybe now you should tell the little green punk about your PAST!"  
"Whaddya mean by that?!" Birdo asked angrily, though again, she knew what he meant.  
"I'm talking about the fact that the first time you met the plumbers, BEFORE Yoshi was even born, you were working for---" Bowser began, but was interrupted when Birdo began pelting him with eggs to shut him up.  
"Ha! You're afraid to face the truth!" Bowser taunted. "You don't even have the courage to tell him!"  
"Tell me what?" Yoshi asked, confused.  
Birdo decided she couldn't hide the truth from him any longer.  
"There's something I've got to tell you," she said to Yoshi.  
"What is it?" Yoshi asked. "Come on, you can tell me anything."  
"Oh this is gonna be good!" Bowser said, laughing. He sat down and made a gesture behind him. A Koopa Troopa brought him popcorn. Bowser began to munch it.  
"I met the Mario Bros. before you were even born," Birdo began.  
"Really?" Yoshi asked. "What were they like?"  
"I didn't get a chance to know back then," Birdo admitted. "See, I was working for the side of evil back then."  
Yoshi's expression didn't change. "Tell me everything," he said.  
Birdo began, "I was just a little girl. My family was poor, but we managed to survive. I wanted a way to help my family get as rich as most of the other families. Then Wart appeared. He promised to make my family rich if I worked for him. I was desperate, so I agreed."  
"Who was Wart?" Yoshi asked.  
"Wart was a frog-like being. He told me at the time that he was a wise king who ruled the dream world. He told me he needed me to become one of his best soldiers so he could get rid of some plumbers that were disturbing his kingdom."  
"Mario and Luigi," Yoshi guessed.  
"That's right," Birdo answered. "Wart fooled me, and I became one of his most loyal soldiers. But I couldn't manage to get rid of the plumbers, so I left the dream world in disgrace to tell my family of my failure."  
"How did they react?" Yoshi asked.  
"My parents told me that I had been tricked and that it was a GOOD things I failed. Wart turned out to be the evil one, who had not been the dream world's original world but had taken over it instead like Bowser keeps trying to take care of this one."  
Birdo paused, shuddering at the memory, then continued.  
"I was so disgusted that I had served the side of evil, not good as I had first thought," she said. "I thought that if I EVER talked about that to anyone, I would be disgraced as much outwardly as I was disgraced inwardly."  
Birdo took a breath, then continued.  
"I made my family promise not to talk about it either," Birdo continued. "But I was terrified that Wart might reveal my service to him publicly. You can imagine my relief when I found out that the plumbers had managed to defeat Wart. I realized I was old enough to leave home, so I managed to eke out a living in the wild. When I won the doubles tennis tournament with you, I sent the prize money (Author's Note: There's no prize money in the game, but the game doesn't tell everything so I made it up) to be divided up between the members of my family. Then BOWSER here---" she pointed to Bowser, still munching popcorn "had the nerve to have his servants gang up on me and drag me here. Then you arrived, and the rest is history."  
Birdo waited for Yoshi's reaction. She was worried that Yoshi might scorn her, or worse, get mad at her because she had once worked on the side of evil. The thought made her sad, and she started crying. Then she felt something VERY warm hugging her (Author's Note: I'm guessing Yoshi's body temperature HAS to be warm to incubate all those eggs he uses). She stopped crying and looked up in surprise only to find Yoshi looking at her with nothing but understanding on his face.  
"I don't care about who you WERE," Yoshi said. "I care about who you ARE NOW. And right now, you're probably the nicest person I ever met."  
"HEY!" Bowser shouted in protest from the "peanut gallery". "You little green IDIOT! She worked for the side of EVIL! You don't accept people like that, you SCORN them! Heaven knows you've scorned ME a lot!"  
Suddenly Bowser was pelted with dozens of eggs. It knocked him down and it also knocked the window at him, rendering him unable to speak for the momemnt.  
A tiny blush was beginning to creep over Birdo and Yoshi's faces.  
"Thanks a lot," Birdo said gratefully. "I was so worried you would reject me for what I did. That's why I never told you during the tournament."  
"Hey, I can sympathize," Yoshi said. "Today I was repeatedly trying to convince myself that you were too good for me."  
Birdo was confused. "Whaddya mean 'too good for you'?" Then realization dawned on her, and she began to get excited. "You mean you---" She didn't say "like me?". She finished by simply hugging him, standing on her tiptoes, and using her snout to kiss him on the nose. Needless to say, this surprised the heck out of Yoshi, but he reciprocated his feelings by hugging her even more tightly. Eventually they broke away from each other, really embarassed but smiling. Then they heard an all-too-familiar voice coming behind them.  
"Oh GOD, that was disgusting!" Bowser said, having apparently recovered from the egg attack. "Romance just makes me wanna PUKE! Just for that I think I'm gonna have you killed right now!" Bowser motioned behind him, and a blue-shelled Koopa Troopa ran out and charged at the newly-formed couple.  
Yoshi simply swallowed the Koopa Troopa's shell, grew wings (Author's Note: In Super Mario World, if a green Yoshi swallows a blue Koopa Troopa shell, he grows wings and can fly) and flew out of the castle with Birdo.  
  
The End  
  
***  
  
E-mail all questions and comments to bleifer@msn.com. 


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